


No rest for the wicked

by Lady_in_Red



Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Ficlet, Gen, Light Angst, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 15:50:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9664232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: Mike spends the night after Ginny's almost no-hitter watching footage of the game.Post 1.10 Don't Say It. Same universe as "I'm on Fire."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this [thread](http://ladyinredfics.tumblr.com/post/157074036081/oddlyfamiliar-ingatrinity) on Tumblr yesterday morning, and further motivated by my need to practice writing Evelyn for the last chapter of In Your Corner.  
> 

Mike can’t sleep. 

He tosses and turns for hours, until he gives up and goes back downstairs, turns the TV on and pulls up the game. He always records them, though he rarely watches them here. The team’s video guys are much better at pulling together useful footage so he doesn’t have to waste time finding what he needs.

This time he watches every moment Ginny is pitching. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for until he finds it. 

She’s not even on the mound. She’s sitting in the dugout in the bottom of the 7th, alone, fidgety but determined. Everyone in that dugout is looking away, Dusty Voorhies even sitting with Buck and Al, something he never does voluntarily. 

Mike walks into the frame. He can’t hear what she says, but he remembers. “Oh, thank God. If one more person ignores me, I’m gonna lose my damn mind.”

He was never going to talk to her. It’s superstition, sure, but some things in baseball are sacred, and this is one of them. Instead of nodding or smiling, acknowledging that she’s talking to him, Mike slaps her hip, waits for her to pull his glove out from under her ass and hand it to him. He walks away without a word. 

But this time, from this angle, Mike sees her face. Confusion, and disappointment. He’s intimately familiar with that expression. She fidgets more, turns her eyes back to the field. 

He fast forwards through his fight with Blip. He can’t deal with that yet. When Ginny takes the mound again, Mike watches her eyes lose their focus on him and scan the crowd. Watches her throw wild. Remembers the sinking feeling in his gut, thoughts spinning as he walked up to the mound, desperate to shake her out of her own head. 

He watches them argue. Thank God the cameras keep their distance, because they totally fucking forgot to cover their mouths. He watches himself walk back to the box and Ginny throw a strike. 

The camera misses the same moment he did, the moment she fell. The roar of the crowd covers any noise she made, but Mike watches himself run to her, his hand supporting her back as she rocked and cursed and grimaced in pain. He can almost hear himself reassuring her it’s going to be okay. What a load of bullshit.

He rewinds before she walks off the field. Rewinds before the analysts start talking about how fragile a pitcher’s arm can be. Goes back to that moment in the dugout, when Mike ignored what her body language was telling him, what she flat out told him, that everyone ignoring her was messing with her head, that she’d been edgy all afternoon despite throwing the most beautiful pitching game he’d caught in years. Knowing what he knows now, that Amelia and her brother are gone and that scrawny guy in the elevator is trying to be her white knight, would Mike have done things differently?

In another universe, one where his head wasn’t firmly up his ass, Mike fucking paid attention to the relief in his rookie’s voice and her eyes when he approached her. He sat down next to her, didn’t say a word because he wasn’t going to be the one to jinx her, but he was there. He let her burn off her nerves chattering at him, watched the tension in her face ease and her shoulders loosen. He let Blip deal with Salvi and his rage against the Gatorade. Divide and conquer. 

Maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything. Maybe Ginny still would have chased that bunt. But he can almost guarantee she wouldn’t have started throwing wild. She wouldn’t have needed to rant at him on the mound, wouldn’t have said the damn words. 

Mike gets in his car around 5 a.m., buys two massive cups of coffee on the way to the hospital, and hands one to Evelyn when he finds her dozing in a lounge down the hall from Ginny’s room. 

Evelyn’s clothes are wrinkled, her makeup smudged around the eyes. He’s never seen her look less than perfectly put together before. She sips her coffee and watches him with an odd, speculative expression that Mike doesn’t like. He feels like she can look right into him, and it’s not comfortable. 

“You know you messed up, right?” she asks finally.

“Yes.” She really has no idea. Yesterday was the tip of a big damn iceberg. 

Evelyn’s head tips as she considers him. “What are you going to do to fix it?”

“I’m here, aren’t I? I’ll talk to the guys at the ballpark later.” Mike can’t think about that yet. There will be groveling, not on his knees because he’s in enough pain already, but it will be humiliating and deserved and he’s really not looking forward to it.

Her eyebrows shoot up. “The guys? Oh, honey, the team will get over it, even my hard-headed husband. I’m talking about Ginny.” 

Mike gulps his coffee to avoid her gaze. He scalds the hell out of his tongue, but it’s worth it. Of course Ginny talked to Evelyn. “Nothing happened.”

“Nothing,” Evelyn echoes, her voice dripping with disbelief. “I’ve never seen her that shook up over any man, especially one who didn’t even kiss her.”

“She’s sleeping with the billionaire,” he says flatly. That he slept with Rachel, assumed it was more than that before Rachel started giving him mixed signals, isn’t anything Evelyn needs to know. In the next thirty seconds, she’s going to tell him what he already knows, that the billionaire is good for Ginny, and that Mike should stay the hell away from her. Blip treats Ginny like a sister. Evelyn is both mama bear and best friend. Far scarier. 

Evelyn’s mouth drops open in genuine surprise. “What? No. I had to convince her to even go out with him.”

“Well, I shared an elevator with the guy at the Omni yesterday morning,” Mike tells her. Sonny might as well have punched him when he held up that tablet and congratulated Ginny on getting laid. 

He can see the wheels turning in her mind, and then her eyes narrow. “Why were you--”

Mike looks away, down the long corridor where Ginny is hopefully still sleeping. At this hour the hospital is quiet. A single tech walks the hall in his Batman scrubs. “Rachel and I might be trying again. I don’t know yet.”

Evelyn sighs. “I’m not one to tell people what to do, but--” Mike stifles a laugh, but she ignores him and keeps talking. “Is Rachel who you really want, or who you think you deserve?”

That shuts him up. It’s not a question he’s ever considered. “She’s my wife.” It’s the only defense he can mount. Evelyn was around when Rachel kicked him out, and didn’t complain when Blip had to drag him out of bars just about every week for months. Not that she was all sympathy. Evelyn also laid down the law and banned Mike from bringing groupies to team gatherings organized by the WAGs. 

Evelyn reaches out and pats his arm, but doesn’t say anything. Mike is grateful to avoid a lecture. The fluorescent lights and lack of sleep are giving him a headache, and his back is throbbing in time with his head. 

Evelyn’s hand tightens, her long, manicured nails just starting to bite into his skin. Mike reluctantly meets her eyes. “I didn’t do anything to Rachel because it wasn’t my place. But if you  break Ginny’s heart….” She smiles, bright and flashing teeth. “You don’t need balls to play baseball.” 

Down the hall, a door opens. A disheveled Ginny peeks out, her right arm in a sling over the loose hospital gown. She looks like hell, but there’s still something about her. A lightness despite the circles under her eyes. Warmth that spreads through him as she turns and spots them. “Hey,” she says, her voice husky with sleep. She doesn’t seem surprised to see him, which does surprise him. They haven't talked since she left the field yesterday.

Evelyn releases Mike’s arm and rises from her chair, leaving her coffee behind and picking up a gym bag he hadn’t noticed sitting at her feet. “Showtime,” she says under her breath.

“I won’t hurt her,” he says quietly, not bothering to look at Evelyn as he stands to join her. 

Evelyn sighs. “You won’t mean to.” She turns her head, studies his eyes. “Come on, All-Star. Being a WAG’s not all looking pretty on a player’s arm.”

Mike matches her shorter steps as they move toward Ginny. “I’m not a WAG.”

Evelyn chuckles dryly. “You could be, someday. Watch and learn, Lawson.” 

Evelyn reaches Ginny first, enveloping her in a careful, one-armed hug. But Ginny’s smile, looking over Evelyn’s shoulder, is all for Mike. 

He doesn’t deserve that smile. Nothing Evelyn says can convince him of that. But he returns it anyway, because Ginny is hurting and her career might be over, and she’s still smiling at him. Whatever his rookie wants today, Mike will do it to keep that smile on her face.

  
  



End file.
